I don’t believe in reincarnation. I’ve spent my whole life making up entire worlds, knowing exactly where they came from and knowing how to make other people believe them – myself included.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the phenomenon of reincarnation as a wonder. Certainly it is. It is an unlocking of the imagination, the fabled 90 percent of our incredible brains that we can’t explain, that lies unused and gives us immense capacities for art, music, love, endeavours like going to the moon, harming each other (unfortunately), healing each other.

Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, says she doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but she believes it makes great stories. Reincarnation is one of the ways we try to understand this unkillable sense that we all contain something far more than what is already explained. And I think that makes terrific stories.